14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA wants to make sure its Icera modem processors are as good as they can be.
To that end, it has licensed customized ESD from Sofics and overvoltage-tolerant I/Os form ICsense.
Now it has everything it needs to create chips with stable 3.3V I/O and robust ESD protection.
The Icera chips will be both better and cheaper to make than they would have been otherwise.
It helps that both technologies have already been proven in TSMC's 0.18um, 40nm and 28nm manufacturing processes (I/Os can handle more than double the voltage of the transistors on the chip).
“Our baseband modem needs to interface with legacy components in smartphones and tablets, such as SIM cards and memory cards. Sofics and ICsense came up with a solution for us that works at high voltages and provides good ESD protection. This enables us to handle off-chip interfaces of up to 3.6 volts, even for non-standard multimedia interfaces like HDMI and USB 3.0,” said Pete Hughes, vice president, Mobile, NVIDIA.